A profile in insobriety?

They risked their lives helping U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
But six Iraqi-Americans from Michigan say they were racially profiled when they were pulled off a flight in August and accused of being a security risk because of their appearance and spoke Arabic. The men were on their way to Detroit after helping train U.S. military personnel in California.

Horrifying. It’s a good thing, however, that reporters like Audrey Hudson and Sara Carter are around in the Washington Times to compare the allegations with the police report:

A group of Iraqi Pentagon contractors is suing American Airlines claiming racial discrimination for delaying its flight, but a police report shows that some of the men might have been intoxicated, behaved in a frightening and belligerent manner and scared one family off the plane….
The men left the plane with the other passengers, but the lawsuit says they were singled out and removed from the flight because they spoke to one another in Arabic.
Once inside the gate area, the lawsuit states, the men “were pulled aside from a crowd of roughly 120 passengers as ‘persons of suspicion” inappropriately thought to pose a threat to security.”
However, a Port of San Diego police officer reported that he was first approached by one of the men, Dave Al-Watan, “who asked me what the problem was.”
The officer said in his report that Mr. Al-Watan had “red, watery eyes and had the odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath.” Another officer who approached the group said he smelled alcohol but could not pinpoint who might have been drinking.

It’s almost enough to make you think that these racial profiling lawsuits against airlines by gentlemen such as the Iraqi contractors and the flying imams are not exactly what they appear to be.